What do you do when your movie has a limited budget but you need high production value?
The movie ‘Sleepless’ needed this shot of a high-tech plant:
But the budget would only allow this:
In this shot we leveraged visual effects in post to create a high-tech set, replacing empty Home Depot boxes in an empty warehouse, with industrial machinery.
Careful VFX planning saved the film many thousands of dollars on this shot.
In this sequence, the main character walks into a factory. Unfortunately, to rent (or even find) a factory of this quality was out of the question.
The quote we got for getting machinery into the warehouse was about $9K just for the rentals, and then another $3K for delivery. So by doing this shot in VFX, we saved production about $12,000.00. And ALSO, we were able to really make use of the space by creating CGI sliding doors, separating the two rooms so the main character could have a quiet conversation with his team.
We were also using this warehouse for another scene that was supposed to be in a completely different location, so doing this shot in VFX enabled us to skip an entire location, saving the production an additional $10,000.00.
What do you think? Leave me a comment here: ‘VFX on a Budget’.
Thanks for checking this out!
Izzy,
Low-budget VFX specialist
